George ought to keep that barn door closed and locked, Tom told himself. There was no sense tempting kids to damage your property, and an open barn door was an invitation. Had Tom Parks looked over his shoulder one last time, he might have noticed a stream of smoke rising from the doorway, but Parks thought he’d seen enough. Though he still figured there was a kid hiding in that barn, he didn’t really want to hassle kids any more than necessary. He believed that kids needed to hide from adults sometimes, which is why they liked barns and tree houses and forts, even unattached garages and old washhouses. Tom Parks had begged his wife to return to Michigan after his father’s death, to move into the old family house, to fix it up and save it. The kids would have a better childhood in the country, he’d told her, with wild lands to roam and safe places to hang out, lots of ways to get trouble out of their systems.
As a teenager, Tom Parks had made plenty of trouble, perhaps as a way of rebelling against the mildness of his family. Around Halloween, he’d soaped windows, strung toilet paper across people’s front yards, and once he’d found a veined, milky afterbirth from his sister’s horse foaling, and in the middle of the night dragged it onto a neighbor’s front porch. Once he and a friend, not George, had even stolen a car, a nearly new Ford coupe, and then left it out on Red Arrow Highway. In fact, Tom Parks had been the one who originally changed the street signs on this road. George’s grandfather Harold, and plenty of others besides, had always called Q Road “Queer Road,” but young Tom Parks was the one who first doctored the Q RD signs by painting out the D and inserting UEE neatly between, and he had done this at every marked intersection for miles. Others had since kept up the tradition—as recently as two months ago somebody doctored a new sign. That proved kids nowadays weren’t all that different than he’d been as a kid. If there’d been drugs when Tom Parks was young, he’d probably have taken them, but fortunately, he’d had only alcohol to screw himself up with. And girls, of course. Once a boy got to be about fourteen, he would always have the option of getting screwed up over girls, whether the girls liked him the way they always seemed to like George Harland, or whether they didn’t give a damn about him, the way girls, for the most part, hadn’t given a damn about Tom Parks.
Even his wife must have disliked him deep down, or she wouldn’t have been able to play such a crummy trick on him, getting him to move to Texas and then, after Tom’s father died and the farm was sold, divorcing him there. Tom Parks had done his best in staying out West five more years for his daughter and son, but when his ex-wife remarried, Parks could bear the flatness and the dry heat of Texas no longer. Parks’s daughter was fifteen and seemed an exotic, glamorous creature—Parks marveled that something so lovely could have sprung from him. If his boy were a troublemaker, then Parks could show a fatherly understanding, pull strings to keep his son from getting whacked by the full force of the law. Tom Parks would have been happy to drive out to Texas to talk to a cop about cutting his son some slack. But there was no danger of that with the boy’s face in the computer screen all the time; the boy hardly even looked up when you were with him. Parks had hoped that his kids might want to move back to Michigan, but neither had even wanted to come visit him this summer. “Maybe I’d come for a week if I had a laptop,” his son had said on the phone.
Gray Cat streaked across Queer Road in front of Parks’s car and disappeared so quickly that he could have been a ghost. Though Parks might well have looked in the rearview mirror and seen smoke dribbling upward, he instead shifted into drive and turned left, headed north on Queer Road, telling himself that it was foolish to always be looking back and regretting. Like his aunt April May said the other day, it was better to look to the future, at what you could still do to change things for the better. He touched the cigarette pack in his top pocket and told himself again that in the future George should lock his barns. Parks did finally look in his rearview mirror, but he focused only on the flame-colored leaves of the maples that lined the east side of the road, on land his family used to own. The leaves were bright enough to burn a man’s eyes.
A half mile north of the barn, Officer Parks slowed as he approached the vegetable stand. He recognized the pretty blond gal near the pumpkins as the occupant of one of the prefabs that had replaced his house. (Unlike Elaine Shore, the young couple hadn’t filed any complaints, God love them.) When he saw his aunt April May on the other side of the pumpkins, Parks gave a blip of his siren and light and pulled into the driveway, to park behind George’s truck.
20
ELAINE SHORE WAS STRAIGHTENING THE GLASS-STOPPERED bottles in her spice rack for the second time that morning when she heard the blip of the police cruiser, a much-needed reminder of order in this neighborhood. She had already adjusted the condiments in her refrigerator door and lined up all the bottles and tubes in the bathroom. She sat again in her breakfast nook, clad in the quilted nylon bathrobe that had become her uniform in the months since she’d retired from driving the school bus. Across the street at the pumpkin wagon stood the blond wife from next door. Elaine’s hair had once been soft and flowing like that, but now even her short strands seemed unmanageable. Elaine had just taken some ibuprofen tablets to fend off a headache she thought might be coming on, but the chaos at the vegetable stand was making her temples throb. First thing in the morning, when the vegetables were arranged in neat rows and the flowers in big glass jars, Elaine admired the colorful rural scene. But when people began getting out of their cars, milling around, turning each squash and melon over in their hands, messing up the piles, Elaine couldn’t bear it. Most people parked on the shoulder at angles so that their cars jutted into the road. And if it wasn’t illegal parking, it was those animals getting loose.
The first time Elaine had called the police about the Harlands’ animals grazing in her lawn this spring, Officer Parks assured her it would be taken care of, and within a half hour that girl tramped over and, without a word to Elaine, grabbed the pony and started walking it home. The other two animals fell in line. When Elaine shouted at the girl and pointed out to her where the pony had done its business, the girl had looked up and said, “Shit makes good fertilizer.” Elaine had been startled by the girl’s face—just for a moment, Elaine thought that girl was an alien. But alien faces, she had reminded herself, were thin and clean. In fact, that round-faced girl with her rumpled clothing and long, messy hair was the complete opposite of an alien. That girl embodied the problem the aliens were coming to solve.
Once Elaine had composed herself, she’d said, “Maybe it’s fertilizer for that garden of yours, but it certainly isn’t fertilizer for a decent lawn.” Then that girl let go of the pony, walked over, and kicked the pile of manure, sent it spraying all over the lawn so nobody could ever clean it up no matter how long they worked. Elaine was shocked speechless, and it took her a few minutes to regain her composure and march into the house to call the police again. Parks must have talked to the Harlands because the next time the animals got into her lawn Mr. Harland led them away and that girl came over with a shovel and carried the several piles of manure back across the road without a word. Off and on ever since, Elaine had noticed that girl staring over in the most intense way, with her arms crossed over her chest, as though trying to control Elaine’s mind. Just seeing that girl made Elaine empty her head of all thoughts in case the girl could read her telepathically.
On October 9, Elaine Shore was grateful to see Officer Parks’s uniformed body pop out of the cruiser, which he’d parked in the driveway, where a person ought to park. She would have preferred, of course, that Officer Parks were more neatly pressed, that his uniform was not so tight across his belly, and that it was not loose and wrinkled elsewhere. The police station ought to be more like the military, she told herself, and they ought to line up all the officers every morning and make sure they looked like proper representatives of the law.
On a Saturday like today, Elaine used to enjoy going out to lunch or visiting her daughter and grandchildren on the west side
of Kalamazoo, but nowadays the outside world just seemed too complicated to negotiate. First there was the downtown traffic, and then her daughter’s house was messy, and her newest grandbaby’s face was always smeared with dirt and jelly, and he drooled so much that he seemed to Elaine downright defective. Since she’d moved out here two years ago, Elaine had become distracted by the wide open space, so much so that she was unable to concentrate, even on her romance novels. Of course, she had been mistaken in originally thinking that the open space was empty; after all, the ground was covered with bugs and caterpillars, and on some mornings tumorlike mushrooms bulged obscenely where the night before there had been nothing. Beneath the soil burrowed moles and snakes and possums; the air was filled with pollen, dirt, and more bugs. The farm world was one of chaos, of life growing out of anyone’s control. But it was probably that illusion of empty space that made Elaine contemplate the possibility of alien ships every hour of every day. Or maybe she thought so often of space aliens simply because their arrival was imminent and the hour of invasion was nearing. As she watched those women handling pumpkins across the street, she conjured up for herself a vision of identical naked gray figures walking single file, with synchronized steps, down the ramp of a gleaming windowless spaceship that she imagined had landed in that girl’s garden. Today could well be day zero, she told herself, the beginning of the new order.
Elaine Shore really hadn’t known that living here in the country was going to involve all this disorder, starting with the lawn: in their old place in Milwood the lawn had been all grass, not wild weeds that could grow six inches in one night so you had to beg your husband to mow the lawn practically every day. The most you could hope for out here was that the lawn was short and green. If it was just short and green you were grateful. And how she had loved the neat, fresh rows of farmland corn when she and her husband had driven by in search of a plot of land to purchase. But at this time of year, when you saw the brown stalks drying in the field, you realized that the rows weren’t as straight as you’d originally thought and the plants themselves were just plain dirty. And when Harland harvested, the machinery threw dust and reddish chaff into the air. That stuff floated and came to rest on her window ledges, on the sidewalk leading from the driveway to the front door, on cars if they weren’t in the garage with the door sealed. It fell in a blizzard on her lawn and on her asphalted and curbed driveway. Afterward, all winter, the fields lay barren in stubble.
She’d driven a school bus for twenty-five years, and in the last five of those years she had been at her wit’s end about the way kids refused to sit in their seats, always squirming, tossing objects, snacking despite the sign NO FOOD OR DRINK. There had been a time she’d liked the kids and the driving, just as there had been a time she’d enjoyed her husband, but both interests had expired. Before they moved to Greenland Township, Elaine and her husband hadn’t slept in the same bed for years. In the new Greenland house, Elaine had tried to sleep with him again. She had even tried making love with him once, but the result was just too sloppy, and to be honest she felt a little queasy even thinking about the whole business. That was why she slept in the spare room. Love had never measured up to the romance novels, but after moving to Greenland, Elaine knew all that fumbling was over for good.
Which was fine, because it gave her more energy to focus on talking with her real estate lawyer and with members of the zoning board and other township officials. Elaine was looking toward the future of this neighborhood. Her lawyer said that she should attend every township meeting and file every possible complaint. He said she should consider herself a pioneer, blazing a trail for others who would come here in the future, when the neighborhood would be row upon row of neat houses and paved driveways. The best hope for this neighborhood, the lawyer had told her, was to get enough people moving out here side by side that the property values went up and people like the Whitbys, Higginses, and Harlands couldn’t afford to keep paying the taxes. Elaine would be an agent for change, the lawyer said, and Elaine took a certain amount of pride in that designation. When enough folks moved in, city water and sewer and natural gas would be piped out, and then they would begin to get these bugs and weeds under control. Elaine would be responsible for bringing civilization to this untamed place.
Elaine’s husband suddenly appeared outside the window, and his physical presence startled her. There he was, walking along the driveway from the mailbox as though everything was fine with the world. He returned to the house by the kitchen door and put a pile of mail in front of Elaine, then calmly filled up his coffee cup again, as though chaos weren’t swirling around them. Elaine smoothed her hair back from her face with both hands, but she could still feel it touching her forehead. She straightened the pile of mail in preparation for going through it one piece at a time.
“It’s all advertising,” her husband said, leaning against the door frame. “Why don’t you get outside today, take a walk or something. You haven’t even gotten dressed for a week.”
Elaine looked back across the street and said, “Do you think they’re paying taxes on that money they take in for those vegetables?”
Her husband shook his head and carried his coffee cup back into the TV room. As soon as he was gone, Elaine unfolded a brochure advertising a Florida retirement village and laid it atop the news spread of the alien landing. Of course Elaine was committed to her mission in Greenland Township, but a week ago, without telling her husband, she had called the Pelican Retirement Corporation and requested this information. The glossy picture before her featured white trailers in a row, each with a little attached front porch, and on each porch stood one tidy round table and two or three deck chairs. Each of the homes had a tiny lush lawn containing exactly one miniature palm tree or spiky bush, and the rest of nature was kept at bay. The development looked even better than she had imagined from the display ad in the Weekly World News.
Elaine sighed and folded her arms on the table and leaned into them so that her hands rested lightly against her breasts. She told herself that her husband would be singing a different tune come spring, when the wind blew over from the pig farm. Oh, yes. Elaine had discovered that life in the country was not all it was cracked up to be. Out in the country with these selfish farmers, it was apparently too much to ask to sit in your own kitchen with the window open two inches without smelling manure. In this neighborhood, it was considered unreasonable to want livestock to remain inside their fences and out of your lawn. People here didn’t care about the difference between legal and illegal parking, and it was foolish to hope that they could have enough self-control to admire the neatly stacked vegetables and pumpkins at the farm stand the way Elaine did and think how quaint, and drive on by to the grocery store.
21
RACHEL WATCHED SALLY PETTING THE ANIMALS AT THE fence line. The skinny bitch couldn’t be bothered to get food or medicine for David, but she could drive around with neighbor men all day. Rachel wished one of the animals would take a bite out of Sally. Maybe Rachel could teach Martini the pony to bite on command. Then if Sally asked to borrow George’s truck, Rachel would tell her to go to hell and give Martini the signal, and he would reach across the barbed wire and chomp her.
“Nice day. The neighborhood is beautiful this time of year,” said the man from across the street, as though Rachel gave a damn what he thought of the neighborhood. Rachel meant to ignore him, but he was a big guy, even taller and broader than he had looked from a distance. Rachel wished George could hire a man this size to help him, but this particular man seemed way too clean. He smelled of soap and his skin reflected light—he was probably impossible to tolerate in sunshine. Rachel was only standing there to keep an eye on Sally, she told herself, to prevent her from bothering George. Sally turned away from the animals and approached with an exaggerated swing of her hips.
“Rachel!” Sally said, with fake delighted surprise. Sally could brighten her face and give the illusion of being animated, the way a small, sickly bird puffed out i
ts feathers to look larger and healthier than it was. The layers of Sally’s hair fell upon one another in a way that made Rachel think of those stupid white domestic ducks preening on the riverbank. Rachel imagined herself wrenching and twisting Sally’s bird body, snapping her in two. Sally picked two pumpkin gourds from the bushel basket Rachel was holding and pressed them onto her breasts so that the stems stuck out like long, curling, alien nipples. The neighbor man laughed hesitantly, as though waiting for Rachel’s approval. Upon seeing Sally’s big-knuckled hands wrapped around the tiny pumpkins, Rachel smiled and snorted a laugh. She couldn’t help noticing Sally’s hands looked just like David’s. Rachel put down her bushel basket and looked around in hopes of seeing David. She should run out and find him and give him a couple of apples, at least. Wherever he was, he was bound to be really hungry by now. Rachel wiped her hands on her jeans.
Sally put the gourds back in the basket and said, “I need to ask George if he can give me a ride to the store today.”
“No fucking way, Sally. He’s busy.” Rachel watched the animals beside the stock barn and tried to rid herself of having momentarily liked Sally, or Sally’s hands anyway. The donkey was chewing on George’s ex-wife’s llama’s neck. Maybe the donkey would be the one she’d train to bite.
George came out of the animal barn and disappeared into his toolshed without Sally spotting him. George apparently hadn’t noticed that Tom Parks had pulled into the driveway behind the truck, and was over there fondling pumpkins with April May and the blonde from across the street. Rachel wasn’t about to go out of her way to announce his arrival. Even though Parks’s concern about Margo’s disappearance seemed sincere, Rachel had to hate him for the way he had tried to talk George out of marrying her, right up until the ceremony six weeks ago.
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